Alone and adrift in Melbourne, Cassandra Pybus returned on a whim to her childhood home of Tasmania. There, she rediscovered nature's power, encountering the island's difficult history as well as her own.

A burnt out property near Miena, Tasmania. The central Tasmanian house was fitted with roof sprinklers and surrounded by cleared land but succumbed to flying embers from bushfires.
AAP Image/Tasmania Fire Service
February 6, 2019

Of 19 World Heritage sites across the country, only two, Kakadu and Uluru-Kata Tjuta, recognise the values of "living" Aboriginal culture. None of Australia's three sites inscribed purely for cultural values recognises Aboriginal people.

Tasdance’s Junjeiri Ballun – Gurul Gaureima, part of The Unconformity festival, performed Indigenous history in Queenstown’s Queen River.
The Unconformity festival
November 2, 2018

Tasmania's Aboriginal languages were decimated during the state's colonial violence. But members of the original community have reconstructed a language, palawa kani, which is now being used more widely.

Most of MONA’s interstate visitors go to the museum without stopping in the nearby suburbs.
Mark Pegrum/Flickr
June 17, 2018

A Tasmanian Requiem brings together Western and Aboriginal voices to confront the violence of the state's Black War. It shows what a historical reckoning, and reconciliation, might look and sound like.

Thylacine joey, from the collections of the Natural History Museum, London.
Penny Edmonds
April 5, 2018

The Franklin River campaign is commonly seen as a green victory; a fight for the right of 'wilderness' to exist. But archaeological research revealing the region's deep Aboriginal history was crucial to it.